(Press-News.org) Researchers from Taiwan have confirmed a bidirectional relation between schizophrenia and epilepsy. The study published today in Epilepsia, a journal of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), reports that patients with epilepsy were nearly 8 times more likely to develop schizophrenia and those with schizophrenia were close to 6 times more likely to develop epilepsy.
Prior clinical studies have shown a prevalence of psychosis among epilepsy patients and studies of psychiatric illness have found a strong relationship between schizophrenia and epilepsy, suggesting a shared susceptibility between the diseases that may be a result of genetic, environmental or neurobiological causes. While a number of studies have established a bidirectional relationship between depression, mood disorder and epilepsy, the current study is the first to investigate this type of relation between schizophrenia and epilepsy.
Using data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance database, the team identified 5195 patients with schizophrenia and 11527 patients with epilepsy who were diagnosed between 1999 and 2008. The patient groups were compared to age and sex-matched controls. Analysis included the incidence and risk of developing epilepsy in the schizophrenia patient group and schizophrenia in the epilepsy cohort.
The findings show that the incidence of epilepsy was higher in the schizophrenia patient group at 6.99 per 1,000 person-years compared to 1.19 in the non-schizophrenia control. Incidence of schizophrenia was 3.53 per 1,000 person-years for patient with epilepsy compared to 0.46 in the non-epilepsy group. Researchers also reported that schizophrenia incidence was slightly higher in men with epilepsy than in women with the disease.
"Our research results show a strong bidirectional relation between schizophrenia and epilepsy," said lead author I-Ching Chou, M.D., with China Medical University Hospital and Associate Professor with China Medical University in Taichung, Taiwan. "This relationship may be due to common pathogenesis in these diseases such as genetic susceptibility and environmental factors, but further investigation of the pathological mechanisms are needed."
INFORMATION:
This study is published in Epilepsia. Media wishing to receive a PDF of this article may contact healthnews@wiley.com.
Full citation: "Bidirectional Relation Between Schizophrenia and Epilepsy: A Population-Based Retrospective Cohort Study." Yu-Tzu Chang, Pei-Chun Chen, I-Ju Tsai, Fung-Chang Sung, Zheng-Nan Chin, Huang-Tsung Kuo, Chang-Hai Tsai and I-Ching Chou. Epilepsia; Published Online: September 19, 2011 (DOI: 10.1111/j.1528-1167.2011.03268.x). http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/j.1528-1167.2011.03268.x
Epilepsia is the leading, most authoritative source for current clinical and research results on all aspects of epilepsy. As the journal of the International League Against Epilepsy, subscribers every month will review scientific evidence and clinical methodology in: clinical neurology, neurophysiology, molecular biology, neuroimaging, neurochemistry, neurosurgery, pharmacology, neuroepidemiology, and therapeutic trials. For more information, please visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1528-1167.
Wiley-Blackwell is the international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, with strengths in every major academic and professional field and partnerships with many of the world's leading societies. Wiley-Blackwell publishes nearly 1,500 peer-reviewed journals and 1,500+ new books annually in print and online, as well as databases, major reference works and laboratory protocols. For more information, please visit www.wileyblackwell.com or our new online platform, Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), one of the world's most extensive multidisciplinary collections of online resources, covering life, health, social and physical sciences, and humanities.
END
Gulf War Illness (GWI)—the chronic health condition that affects about one in four military veterans of the 1991 Gulf War—appears to be the result of several factors, which differed in importance depending upon the locations where veterans served during the war, according to a Baylor University study.
Published online today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the study investigated links between GWI and veterans' locations during the war. GWI was most prevalent in veterans who served in forward areas of Iraq and Kuwait, where it was most strongly associated ...
Call a bird "birdbrained" and they may call "fowl." Cornell University researchers have proven that the capacity for learning in birds is not linked to overall brain size, but to the relative size and proportion of their specific brain regions.
Songbirds with upper brain regions that are larger in relation to lower regions have a greater capacity for learning songs. Higher brain areas control the majority of cognitive and learning functions, while lower brain areas control more motor functions, according to the new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy ...
Like DNA, fingerprints are unique to each person or set of identical twins. That makes them a valuable identification tool for everything from crime detection to international travel. But what happens when the tips of our fingers are missing those distinctive patterns of ridges?
It's not the premise for a science fiction movie, but a real-life condition known as adermatoglyphia. It's also known as "Immigration Delay Disease," because affected individuals experience difficulty in passing through security or checkpoints where fingerprint identification is required. Now ...
This has been a good year for Kepler, NASA's planet-hunting satellite telescope.
Last week, a team of astronomers announced they had discovered a planet that orbits two stars – a discovery that already has the field rethinking how planets are formed. And earlier this year, it was announced there are hundreds of possible planets in a small region of the Milky Way Galaxy, including 20 that have already been confirmed. Planets are also being found in a diversity of solar systems. All of this possible because of Kepler.
Three prominent researchers – Jack J. Lissauer, NASA's ...
In advance of a United Nations conference today on the global challenges of treating cancer and other diseases, the UBC Graduate School of Journalism has launched an ambitious multimedia site, The Pain Project, which documents one of the greatest challenges to treating chronic illnesses: severely constrained access to morphine.
The Pain Project, www.internationalreporting.org/pain, results from a year-long investigation by UBC's International Reporting Program (IRP). Teams traveled to India, Ukraine and Uganda to determine how these countries manage the pain of patients ...
EUGENE, Ore. -- (Sept. 19, 2011) -- The thought of toys being given out as part of children's meal deals might be easier to swallow, and better for you, if the toys are part of a collectible set and tied to healthy, nutrition-rich food choices. Who says? Kids and their parents do.
The findings of a new study come during a time of debate over obesity in the United States -- about one-third of adults are now obese, as are 17 percent of children ages 2-19, notes the Centers for Disease Control -- and the growing belief that toys with fast-food meals only serve to put fatty, ...
SalesFUSION, the maker of SalesFUSION 360, an integrated sales and marketing demand generation platform, debuted a new native version of its marketing automation application for Dynamics CRM 2011 this summer. Known as inDynamics because of its native email and web analytics features, SalesFUSION's unique approach on integrating marketing and sales for Microsoft CRM brings the power and feature set of an enterprise app inside the Dynamics CRM framework.
SalesFUSION recently announced that over 110 companies are actively using its marketing automation platform with Dynamics ...
Daejeon, the Republic of Korea, August 8, 2011—Can a flexible LED conformably placed on the human heart, situated on the corrugated surface of the human brain, or rolled upon the blood vessels, diagnose or even treat various diseases? These things might be a reality in the near future.
The team of Professor Keon Jae Lee (Department of Materials Science and Engineering, KAIST) has developed a new concept: a biocompatible, flexible Gallium Nitride (GaN) LED that can detect prostate cancer.
GaN LED, a highly efficient light emitting device, has been commercialized in LED ...
In more than 70 per cent of legal disputes over informed consent, patients allege the doctor failed to properly explain the risks of complications, a University of Melbourne study published in the latest Medical Journal of Australia has found.
Professor David Studdert from the Melbourne School of Population Health and Melbourne Law School and co-authors reviewed nearly 2000 negligence claims against doctors insured by Avant Mutual Group Limited and complaints lodged with the Health Services Commissioner of Victoria between January 2002 and December 2008.
The authors ...
A new paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, explains weaknesses in our understanding of climate change and how we can fix them. These issues mean predictions vary wildly about how quickly temperatures will rise. This has serious implications for long term political and economic planning. The papers lead author is Dr Nigel Fox of The National Physical Laboratory, The UK's National Measurement Institution.
The Earth's climate is undoubtedly changing, but how fast and what the implications will be are unclear. Our most reliable models rely ...
